Cunt (26 page)

I feel really blessed that such an incredibly smart person would take time out of
her life to write me such a beautifully articulated letter.

Thank you, Zabrina.

This multifaceted issue raised a lot of questions in my heart. I called my friend
Lynnee Breedlove, a woman who—as lead singer for the band Tribe 8—has had her dick
sucked on stage by hundreds of people. This surely merits an entry in the Guinness
Book of World Records by anyone’s standards except for, evidently, the people at Guinness.

Anyway, I needed answers and Lynnee is a person who often has good ones.

And she did, but not like how I thought her answers might go.

She said:

This was one of those moments where gold lame banners unfurl from the sky in my mind
and trumpets blare in the dawn’s early light of my consciousness and I say, “Oh. But
of course.”

Question time.

What if someone who was born a “boy” feels like a “girl” almost always?

If s/he dates girls, is s/he heterosexual or homosexual?

What if someone who was born a “girl” feels like a “boy” five months out of the year
like clockwork?

If s/he dates girls is s/he bisexual?

What if someone who grew up to be a “man” felt like being more than a woman every
Friday night at the local cabaret?

What if this “man” was happily married to a woman and had three kids?

What if this “man” was happily married to a man and had three kids?

What if someone who grew up to be a woman felt like being a man when she went out
for solo nights on the town?

What if, as this man, she developed an endearingly cantankerous personality? And what
if she loved this personality and loved having two completely different sides of herself
that she manifested through changes in dress, thinking, environment and comportment?

What if a kid felt completely NOT the specific gender that society assigned him/her
throughout life, and so decided to get an operation or take hormones when s/he grew
up so that his/ her physical appearance would mirror the self-image s/he holds dearest
to his/her heart?

What is wrong with any of this?

What, exactly, does it mean to be a “woman?”

What, exactly, does it mean to be a “man?”

Why shouldn’t one’s gender be as fluid as one’s life should be, if it’s a happy life,
I mean.

If it’s a life where freedom happens.

I wrote
Cunt
from my experience as a white woman who grew up on the west coast of the U.S.A. in
a working-class single-parent home. I grew up in a culture that hates cunts, hates
women, hates everybody who isn’t white and/or white-identified and hates all of us
over here in what Eddie Murphy and I lovingly refer to as “the faggot section.” (
Eddie Murphy: Comedian
, 1983)

When I found out that the word “cunt” once held emphatically non-derogatory meanings
in cultures all over the world, I saw this huge link in the way both women and this
word have been denigrated over time. It took
thousands of years
to get women to believe we were such silly things as “the weaker sex.” I was seeking
freedom from this history for myself and for everyone who is afflicted with it. My
experience of being a woman was, and is, greatly influenced by my cunt: a maligned
part of my body that bleeds, that can be raped, that was the focal point of two harrowing
vacuum abortions; a cunt that produces grand, smashing orgasms.

I never thought my cunt was what
made me a woman,
but I knew that many of my experiences as a woman were (and continue to be) centered
around my cunt.

I considered defying society’s prescription for how we treat our bodies to be a revolutionary
act of nonconformity. It is
political resistance
to learn self-protection, to masturbate, to fuck whomever you want, to take control
of your body’s functions and fluids. All of these things are in direct opposition
to how society deems we should act and feel. I still believe this with all my heart,
but in the last few years, I’ve been inspired to think about gender variance in a
broader context. This has really shaken up my whole notion of how I perceive the world—and
my book.

As a child, I took umbrage against being repeatedly told I was “such a pretty little
girl until you open your mouth,” but I was also perfectly content doing things little
girls weren’t “supposed” to do, such as fighting, cussing and challenging my teachers.
Through all of this, though, I never felt a conflict about my assigned gender.

I knew I wasn’t like the “good” girls at my school who cried if you hit them with
a muddy dodge ball. I knew I was a “bad,” “loud” and “aggressive” girl.

But still, a girl.

Before people started asking me about trans-inclusion, I simply took it for granted
that I was a biological woman. When I stopped to think about it on a daily basis,
however, I seldom consciously think, “I am a woman.” I am most often aware that I
am a woman when I feel threatened, or when someone—through actions, body language
or words—points out that I am a woman.

When I am riding my skateboard late at night and see a group of (potentially drunk,
repressed and sexually frustrated) men outside a bar on the sidewalk, I feel like
a woman. I am faced with a number of choices, all based on survival. Should I cross
the street? Should I yell, “Coming through, fellas!” and plow forward? Should I turn
back and go around the block before they notice me? Should I hop off into the street
and coast around them?

At decision-making times like these, I am acutely aware of being a woman.

When I am in the airport and a security person hollers, “FEMALE,” so I can be wanded,
I feel like a woman.

When I am on my period and aggressively shun loud-mouthed men and their radio stations,
I feel like a woman.

In the final analysis, I think of myself as
a woman
only in specific circumstances.

The rest of the time I am just me.

Me, asking questions.

Me, in flux.

Isn’t this the same for most people?

I mean, when you stop to think about it.

Whenever I go to the Midwest I feel very comfortable because I always think I am surrounded
by dykes. To me, women in the Midwest are much sturdier and more assertive than women
in other regions of the U.S. I know it is irrational for me to feel this way, but
I am presently conditioned to view dykes as sturdier and more assertive than everyone
else. This is not to say that I don’t know a lot of kickass straight ladies and prissy
lesbians, but in general, queer women are not people one wants to tangle with. Same
with women in the Midwest. Hence, my comfort level rises there. Does this mean that
women in the Midwest challenge gender roles more than women in other places?

No.

It means my perception of gender is in flux and affected by context.

In my experience, there is a certain demographic of gay men who are obsessive about
their appearance, endlessly yap into cell phones and walk around like they are very,
very busy, all, all, all the time. Subsequently, in Los Angeles, I often make the
mistake of assuming straight men are this specific kind of flaming gay man. I am conditioned
to perceive a certain kinda guy as a certain kinda gay, and I see this guy all over
LA. In any other part of the country, he probably is gay, but in LA he is likely an
ardent heterosexual.

Does this mean that men in Los Angeles challenge gender roles more than men in other
cities?

Fucken, fuck no.

It means my perception is in flux and affected by context.

Everybody’s
perception is in flux and affected by context.

Gender is fluid and gender norms vary fantastically.

So when we talk about gender, we are all talking about something endlessly fractalized
and fascinating to say the least.

I was born a woman and I live as a woman. In certain contexts, I deal with prejudice
because I do not conform to what a woman “should” look like. I don’t shave very often.
I keep my fingernails clipped shorty short. I ride a skateboard. I often wear what
many consider to be “men’s” clothes and footwear. All of this is subtly—and not so
subtly—unacceptable to many people.

In general heterosexual society, I sometimes feel ill at ease, but no one gawks at
me or says stuff like “What are you?”

In the queer community, I am more or less a plain jane, a runna-the-mill white dyke
who shops at thrift stores.

This has led me to wonder what it would be like to be treated by the queer community
the way blindly heterosexual society treats me. What if I didn’t conform to gender
norms upheld by the queer community?

Well, a coupla things have given me some insights on what my life might be like.

The death of Sylvia Rivera led me to some pretty ugly aspects of history.

According to legend, Ms. Rivera was known as the person who instigated the Stonewall
riots in New York City. This is something of a myth, but I like tall tales.

They say
that when the cops raided the famous Stonewall Inn in June of 1969, Ms. Rivera threw
a brick/her shoes/a bottle at them, thus inciting what would become a nationwide fight
for queer—but, as we shall see, not tranny—rights.

What really happened is she, along with the whole crowd, reached critical mass and
everyone got sick of the same fucking brutalization at the hands of the NYPD at the
exact same time.

After Stonewall, she went on to become this huge activist and revolutionary. Along
with Marsha P. Johnson and Angela Keyes Douglas, she was pivotal in organizing the
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). In 1970, she and
Ms. Johnson started an organization called STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).

It kinda pissed me off that I never heard of any of these truly heroic women until
I got five or so emails telling me that Sylvia Rivera had died. (Peacefully, in the
hospital, surrounded by loved ones.)

I searched her name on Google and ended up at transhistory.org.

Here I learned that Ms. Rivera—a tireless crusader for queer and tranny rights—
lived on a fucking wharf
in New York City for a year and a half because she was also a crack addict and Rudy
Giuliani’s administration rendered her (and many others) homeless. During this time,
Marsha P. Johnson was murdered. Her body was found in the Hudson and the police, insisting
she committed suicide, refused to open any kind of investigation. Marsha P. Johnson
was Sylvia Rivera’s mentor and best friend. As far as I can find, the gay and lesbian
community offered absolutely no support in pressuring the NYPD to open an investigation
in her death.

For the rest of her life, Sylvia Rivera would wear a button photo of Ms. Johnson on
her outer garments.

I do not doubt that she was murdered because her loved ones said she was not suicidal,
she left no note, she was on her way home from the 1992 Pride March in NYC, and murder
seems to be a pretty common way to die when you are transgendered.

For instance, on June 20, 2000, it was widely reported that cabbies and street vendors
cheered
while witnessing the brutal stabbing murder of 25-year-old Amanda Milan in front
of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Though there was no way for the police to claim
Ms. Milan killed herself, newspapers (such as the
New York Times
) nevertheless served her the profound post-mortem injustice by reporting that, “A
man was fatally stabbed in Midtown Manhattan yesterday after a dispute with two other
men, the authorities said.....The victim...was found on the sidewalk...dressed in
women’s clothing and stabbed once in the neck.”

If you look up some photos of the stunningly gorgeous Ms. Milan, you will see that
it would require an entirely deluded stretch of imagination to mistake her for a “man.”

Six months prior to her death, one of Ms. Milan’s dearest friends, Simone, died after
being thrown from a five story window in San Francisco. Two years before that, their
friend, Kim, who rounded out this triumvirate of soulmates, was found mangled beyond
recognition at the bottom of a cliff in Australia.

She was identified by the serial number of her breast implants.

Do a web search. Google will give you 9,080 hits for “transgender murder.”

I have a very difficult time believing Marsha P. Johnson decided to end her life by
drowning herself in the Hudson River, no matter what the NYPD says.

Here’s the part where I got really, really pissed off: